BROCKTON – Leighann Hammond has lived a few doors down from The Lit for nearly 25 years. She remembers taking her daughter and her friends there for dinner but, for years, it’s been “nothing but trouble” and she avoids it altogether. Two years ago, the bar lost its alcohol license after a man was beaten to death in the parking lot. In 2010, police responded to a fatal shooting and a knife fight inside the bar. That year cops showed up 107 times, including 10 times for assault and batteries in progress.

On Friday, trouble once again found the 117-year-old Ames Street bar.

A 21-year-old Brockton man was shot and killed inside The Lit shortly after noon -- a murder that city officials are calling a targeted act of violence.

Hammond, like several neighbors watching police investigate the scene Friday, said she was not surprised by the shooting.

“It never used to be like that,” Hammond, 49, said. “It’s an awful thing to say but, sadly enough, you condition yourself to get used to it.”

Ward 6 Councilor Michelle DuBois has been calling for the bar’s closure for years, and has been working with the owner and city and state agencies to redevelop the property into residences. She says The Lit is known around the Lithuanian Village as “the murder bar.”

The bar is now closed indefinitely as a crime scene, Mayor Bill Carpenter said. He is working with city attorneys and Police Chief Robert Hayden to determine what actions the city can take against the bar, possibly including an emergency meeting of the License Commission.

Carpenter said Hayden has increased patrols in the neighborhood but stressed that police do not believe it was a random act of violence.

“It was an assassination,” Carpenter said.

A few hours after a fatal stabbing elsewhere in the city, the shooter entered The Lit through a back door and fired two shots into the upper chest of Elson G. Miranda, according to police. Miranda was brought to a local hospital and pronounced dead shortly thereafter.

Plymouth County District Attorney Timothy Cruz said in a statement that the state police and Brockton police are investigating, and that an autopsy will be performed. He also said the earlier stabbing on Green Street was unrelated to the shooting.

The bar's license was suspended for three months in 2012 after 41-year-old Brian Bishop was fatally beaten there in June. The alleged killers, Kent Johnson and Rodney Finch, both of Brockton, are awaiting trial.

Page 2 of 2 - In January 2010, Darnell Harrison, 26, was shot to death outside The Lit. Kyle Bryant, 31, of Brockton, was sentenced last fall to life without parole for the murder.

Annie Branch has lived around the corner from The Lit for five years. When she first moved to the neighborhood, she found the bar comfortable and a nice place to eat and drink.

“It was a good bar when we used to go,” Branch, 56, said. “But then people started going in with drugs and we stopped going.”

Branch said she is trying to move back to New London, CT, where she lived for 30 years. Where she lives now, Branch said, people just do whatever they want.

“It’s scary,” she said.

DuBois said The Lit is dragging down the values of surrounding property and that landlords nearby are constantly calling the police about drug activity. Children in the neighborhood are offered drugs and prostitutes lurk outside the bar, she said.

“What happened at the bar [Friday] is itself enough for it to be closed down,” she said. “It really just needs to go away.”